God of the Forgotten
by Nephilim88
Summary: Valentina Cardoso, an attempted hero employed by SHIELD, faces new challenges as repayment for mistakes made in life.
Author's Note: This is a short story mostly intended to explore what happens to an unintentional villain when she dies. I'm hoping to get more experience in streamlining conversation and correcting my writing mechanics. It features characters from the Marvel Universe and OCs.

If people want more, I'll write more, but this is still an exercise more than anything else.

 **Prelude**

Val died.

It's a far easier thing to write than what really happened, isn't it? Two little words, only one of which had any meaning to most people, and even that one indicates that there is nothing that can be done about it now. So why bother? Even those few people who knew Val wouldn't care that she was dead. She had finally made herself completely irredeemable, a monstrous soul to match her appearance.

Take a human and replace soft skin with hard purple scales. Take away the familiar geography of the face by melting ears and nose leaving harsh contours with serpentine smoothness. But make sure and leave the human eyes in that alien face. A tiny window to what used to be a little girl from Brazil. Now take this creature and raise her with the Hand. Teach her to kill and never give it a second thought. Break her mind and take her memory, leave her to fend for herself in America, but don't contact the Xavier School for Gifted Children. No, no, she'll find her way there on her own. Of course, that's after some struggling and conflict to build her into someone who is so desperate for warmth and emotion that she will do anything.

That was Val. A thing that had no place, no purpose and no idea about social graces. Tons of brainpower, just not the best at dealing with life as it happens. Oh the Institute was a nice starting point, but she was quickly drafted by SHIELD, shenanigans ensued, she directly pissed off an ancient evil god of fear, and, of course, she backed the wrong side in the Civil War. That last bit made sure she didn't have any friends at the end of her life. Only enemies and people she had betrayed.

So she died alone, in more pain that anyone should have to endure, with a ghostly hallucination of Amatsu-Mikaboshi grinning smugly at her the whole time.

Honestly, it should have been the end of all her problems. A nice, gory death, an end to the confusion of her short, brutal life; the other cosmic shoe is dropped. But this is Val we're talking about here. Nothing ever goes according to plan…

 **Chapter 1**

Amatsu waited patiently for his latest plaything to finish dying. He had been waiting so very patiently for this one that it was making him sick with giddy anticipation. This pathetic wretch of a girl had sealed him within the void between dimensions with some help from her friends. He'd been so close to breaking all of them and slipping into this universe! His lip curled with distaste at the memory.

He'd psychically imprisoned all but one of the group inside their own fears. A horrific universe crafted from their own memories. Most of them were boring and predictable until he'd entered the head of this one, this Valentina Cardoso.

She had taken one look at the world he had reflexively crafted with core fears and dismissed it. She hadn't cared a bit! Curious, Amatsu dug into her mind and found two completely different sets of memory. Only one was accessible to the damn fool! And then he felt his hold over these would be heroes breaking. So of course, he had planted his sigil* in this unusual mind in order to trace it. For in her ignorance and arrogance, she had believed that she had already lost everything she could ever care about.

And the bitch had said she wasn't afraid of anything he could do to her! Well there's always time to learn. There would be an eternity to learn the error of her ways when her soul finished detaching from what was left of her corpse. Unbeknownst to this foolish child, once a god's sigil had been placed on a soul, the soul became that god's property. Val's spirit would be his to torment into insanity until time ceased to exist!

Now if she would just hurry up and die already!

*A sigil is a god's personal mark, usually left on a soul once a person's beliefs have solidified into faith in a particular god or pantheon. To be placed on an unwilling, living soul, Amatsu created a parasitic growth inside Val's head. Welcome to the congregation, here's your free tumor.

* * *

Val stared at the nightmarish figure of Amatsu. His image appeared to be flickering between some basic horror movie forms. Now he's a haunting demonic child, now he's a shadowy monster, now he's a man with a gaping maw. Well fuck his B-movie scare fest.

Even while dying she had refused to give him the satisfaction of screaming. Aside from the basic "fuck you" principle that governed her attitude towards the ancient evil, she had the distinct feeling that it got him off to see people so scared of the big boogie man. The dude was a major creep.

And now that sick bastard was reaching out those long creepy fingers towards her. She wanted to bite his fingers, head butt that sneering grin, to rip him apart and send him back to the nothingness from which he came. But she was so damn tired. So tired*…

So she compromised by staring directly into his eyes and then dismissing him from her notice. Why should she care what the damn thing wanted now? She was dying; soon the entire world was going to shut off**.

Aw, look at that. Amatsu doesn't like being ignored. Well to hell with him, and to hell with his fear mongering too.

Instead of giving more attention to the little spoiled brat over there, Val watched the shadows begin to darken around her. They almost seemed to twist and bow in her direction.

Wait a minute. Those shadows are actually bending. Oh what the hell is this shit…? But Amatsu's getting more pissed that I'm not looking at him. Logically it follows that this is not Amatsu's doing. So what the hell _is_ doing this?!

*The cold wasn't helping either. She'd never gotten over her dislike of the cold, not since that mess in the Bosnian winter wastes. Don't know what SHIELD was thinking sending a snakelike mutant into that environment…

**It should be noted here that Val did not in any way believe that there was an afterlife. This makes this entire thing much funnier somehow.

* * *

The shadows coalesced and coiled around Val's emergent soul quick as a heartbeat. Amatsu couldn't see through the supernatural blackness and it briefly crossed his mind that he had been cheated.

No, he thought in disbelief, no it's some sort of trick to try and make me think she's gone. This one is very resourceful after all. She must have tried one last effort to get away.

But the shadows cleared and there was no struggling purple lizard girl, nor a sign of what had happened! Val's broken husk was still stinking up the place, but there was no damned soul! Amatsu reached out through the sigil and felt nothing! It was like she had never existed at all! She was lost to him*!

*If a mortal had happened across this desolate piece of ground at this moment, they would have died of fright instantly, and the last thing they would have seen would have been Amatsu pitching a temper tantrum.

* * *

Val shook her head to clear the darkness lingering in her vision. The shadows had coiled and writhed and rose and leaped all in the space of a second! And then there had been that strange feeling like her whole body had sneezed…

She looked at her surroundings to try and get the lay of the land at the very least. Her eyes dilated to let in all the light she could gather, but it revealed very little as to her location.

From the rural fields she had died in, she had been transported to some sort of old growth forest. This was a dim clearing, but even the trees didn't give her much help as to a location. And the light was a faint suggestion with a slightly greenish tint thanks to the heavy canopy. Was it morning? Late afternoon? No way to tell for sure. But those questions were abruptly driven out of her head as she heard a soft rustle behind her.

She froze and listened again, hoping to pinpoint a clue about this new player in the game. The rustling sounded like leaves, so it was most likely touching the ground, possibly a humanoid biped; the noises were soft, so they probably weren't carrying any metallic weapons or armor of any kind. Val calculated her odds of survival before remembering that this was no longer an option and turned to face the source of the noise.

Val was completely unprepared for what lingered not quite in the darkest shadows.

A huge, impressive bearlike creature with black and grey fur was sprouting shadowy tentacles that grew and were reabsorbed quickly back into its body. It was currently standing upright, which showed just how large those claws were on massive paws attached to thick forelimbs. There was a splash of grey across the chest that almost looked like some kind of symbol, but Val had no time to register that before the thing dropped to all fours and began a slow stride towards her.

Val had faced up to some terrifying things before now, and since her entire worldview had just shifted on its axis from alive to dead, she felt nothing as the great creature loomed over her now. It bowed its neck and looked at her with eyes that were a deep and vivid emerald without any white corneas to them.

Val abruptly heard a voice in her head all the way down to her bones.

"Do you know why you are here?"

Val swallowed and calmly replied, "No, I didn't even think there would be a here to go to after I died."

"Did you learn nothing when you crossed the old god so intent upon your doom?"

"I just thought he was some kind of powerful mutant. We have a lot of those now."

The thing let out a great huff of air that blew Val's black hair backwards.

"You were a fool, but you were a very lucky fool. The old god will not let you go now. He will hunt you forever in his shortsighted pettiness. He hungers for your torture to feed his strength."

"Well that's just great. I make enemies all the time, may as well spit in a god's eye if I can manage it."

"You have a strange sense of humor little mortal. Best you not use it too much with those who don't know you very well. And there aren't too many of those, now are there?"

"No, I suppose not. So if Amatsu has such a huge hard on for my soul, why did you warp me away to the forest? What was the point of any of that?"

"Amatsu, as you call him, is annoying enough that I like seeing him frustrated. And besides that, he broke the rules and claimed you when by all rights you were due to become one of mine anyway."

"What do you mean 'one of yours'? Who are you?"

"I am the god of the all things lost and abandoned, forgotten and forsaken. Mine is the realm of deep shadows into which many things must fall. And you were one of mine from a very young age indeed. Forces have acted upon you, as you have acted upon the world. And you have made some very bad choices indeed."

Val remained silent remembering the weight she still carried in her heart for those she had left behind.

"Yes, terrible choices, sometimes made when there was no good option left, sometimes made with the mistaken belief that things could still be saved, but always choices that _you_ made.

You left the X-men when they only wanted what was best for you, you trusted a man that you did not fully understand and made no effort to understand, you betrayed your only friends, and you finally refused something on moral grounds when it no longer made a difference.

I could go on and on about the decisions that have lead you to my door. But all that matters is that you steadily refuse to walk beside others for more than a year or so at a time. You became bad news, Val. Many people wouldn't care that you ended up in Amatsu's claws."

"But you did. Why?"

The great bear growled and sent chills down Val's spine.

"He broke the rules. Gods aren't supposed to mark mortals anymore. It led to fights that shook the realms of existence when gods took out their pissing matches on humans. Mythology is full of the echoes of such times. Amatsu forgets in his anger. I took pleasure in reminding him."

"You said he claimed me. Marked me? How? I know I've been having weird nightmares since I ran into him the first time, but that's all."

The bear dropped to all fours again, bringing him much closer to Val's eyes. It seemed to stare through her with all the focus of a laser.

"You have his mark burned into your brain. There behind your left eye."

Val shivered and said, "Eww, I don't want any part of that jerk in my brain!"

"Most understandable. I can remove it, but the process will not be pleasant. I can change his sigil into mine. And once I remove it, it will be permanent."

"Why is it permanent?"

"You have died. There is no stealing of souls from one god to another after they are counted as that god's harvest. The only reason I can do it now is because Amatsu broke the rules and marked you while you were alive. It gives you precious few options.

You can either try to avoid Amatsu for eternity, or you can accept my sigil, along with all the protection and responsibilities it provides."

"Wait, what are the responsibilities?"

"You would be charged with finding things that are lost, hiding things that must remain lost, and cataloging all the things that humanity has forgotten and abandoned. There are many souls in these woods, and many paths to tread through them. Perhaps you would walk with a soul from time to time, but your essential nature is one of solitude."

"And Amatsu could never get me again?"

"Never."

"Then I accept your sigil and will do my best to bear it honorably."

The god let out a low chuckle and rumbled like a volcano.

"I didn't think you had it in you to be so formal. Perhaps there are yet more surprises to you. I look forward to discovering them. Now brace yourself. This will be painful."

A ribbon of darkness snaked from the bear's chest and hovered in front of Val's left eye. It seemed to float gently for a moment before diving into and through the soft orb. Val dropped to her knees and screamed. The fire in her eye was spreading, twisting through flesh and bone until her face felt consumed by the pain. Val could swear she felt it punch through the back of the eye socket and into her brain. A new layer of wrongness spread throughout her body as a small piece of her soul's structure was destroyed and remade in a new image.

It seemed to take forever, but Val eventually regained her senses and wondered why she was so warm. A moment's confused deduction resulted in the answer: the god had grabbed her as she fell. She was curled in the fetal position within those massive forearms.

She cleared her throat and said, "Sorry about that. I don't normally have fainting fits."

"I've seen far worse when a sigil is overwritten. You are now one of my lost children. You are free to roam the shadows as you see fit. Remember, yours is the task of finding, hiding and remembering. Rise now, Valentina Cardoso, and see the change wrought within you", it said gesturing to a pool of water.

Val stood somewhat shakily saying, "I don't remember ever telling you my full name. Call me Val, it's short and to the point. And speaking of names, what exactly is yours?"

The bear shook its shaggy head and Val heard the laughter in its mental voice as it said, "Surely you don't think a god of things that are forgotten has a name that anyone remembers? No, my entire realm exists in the darkness that clouds the mind. You may call me Huron."

Val had just made it to the pool when she saw the glowing mark laid over what had been a normal eye.

"What happened to my eye?! And why doesn't it affect my vision?!"

"It is my sigil. I felt it prudent to advertise your allegiance to any who saw you considering the circumstances under which you were brought here. And your eyes are no longer bound by the simple rules of physics and biology now. I strongly believe that the mark will serve you well in the future concerning both your time here and with Amatsu."

"Well, thank you for saving me Huron. I'll do my best to be worth the time and effort."

"I would expect no less of you. I see an intriguing future for you, Val. I will observe with interest."


End file.
